All posts tagged ‘Bible’

Shannon Wheeler is an incredibly prolific cartoonist. He’s probably best known for his underground comic Too Much Coffee Man, but he has also drawn comics for the New Yorker and has several other books that have come out recently. He won an Eisner Award this year for his comics collection I Thought You Would Be Funnier. I spoke to Wheeler at Wordstock last weekend about his books, the Bible, and a really offensive “children’s” book that you shouldn’t let your kids read. In fact, you probably shouldn’t even let them read about it.

GeekDad: First of all, I know you’ve got a couple books recently out and a couple coming soon. What’s in the pipeline?

Shannon Wheeler:Too Much Coffee Man is a 500-page collection of 20 years of underground TMCM comics. I also did a “children’s book” called Grandpa Won’t Wake Up that’s adult-skewed: two kids trying to wake up their dead grandpa, and it gets very dark very quickly. Oil and Water is a 150-page graphic novel I did with Steve Duin, a columnist. We went down to the Gulf Coast and wrote this about the BP oil spill, more of a drama. I just put out a second edition of I Thought You Would Be Funnier since we sold out of the first printing. God Is Disappointed in You is a book that I’m working on now. It’s a refashioning of the Bible. Mark Russell is writing it, and I’m doing gag cartoons. Each book of the Bible is condensed down to a few paragraphs and then I do cartoons with it. Continue Reading “Wordstock Interview: Shannon Wheeler” »

Geeks are thorough. We love completeness and detail. When you are playing D&D, you do not fight a monster. You battle a Skullcrusher Ogre with a speed of 30, an armor class of 22, a base attack of +12 and +25 if grappling. Over the years we have looked to “definitive guides” to answer any and all questions about our geek obsessions. The D&D franchise has probably the most complete set of canon material. Star Wars would follow a close second.

This past October, Bungie answered the prayers of their legions of fans with the release of the official Halo Encyclopedia. We had a chance to chat with the book’s consulting editor and sci-fi author Tobias Buckell.

GD: You mentioned on your blog that DK approached you as someone with Halo knowledge to assist in the editing process. Was it your work on The Cole Protocol that gave you the advantage?

TB: I would have to imagine that put me in the running! They were looking for a consultant, and my name was passed on to them as someone familiar with the property. I’ve been reading DK books of all sorts since I was a kid, so getting a chance to work with them was cool.

GD: The Halo Encyclopedia draws on each of the official Halo releases (up through ODST and Halo Wars). Did you find it difficult to check and cross-check the canon with such an extensive story and background?

TB: I was getting whiplash from looking stuff up! Imagine me at 5am, sitting blearily in front of the computer, all the Halo novels, graphic novels, comic books, scattered around my office, and various files open on my 24″ monitor and laptop screen.